Two Israeli Parties Join Barak's Coalition

June 26, 1999|By DEBORAH SONTAG The New York Times

JERUSALEM — Natan Sharansky, the Russian immigrant leader, will be the next interior minister, wresting control of the powerful ministry from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, which has held it for years.

Sharansky -- whose party campaigned for the Interior Ministry -- signed an agreement on Friday to join the coalition government of Israel's Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak.

The settlers' National Religious Party did, too, with a promise of the Housing Ministry.

As coalition talks accelerated, those were the first finalized moves in what has been an arduous five-week-long process.

A writer for the newspaper Maariv, Chemi Shalev, described it as a political "boot camp."

Barak, who defeated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the election on May 17, has until July 9 to form a government.

He has been striving to forge a broad-based coalition that would absorb the opposition, principally Shas and the Likud Party, now led by Ariel Sharon, the departing foreign minister.

Some commentators have questioned Barak's desire to build such a broad coalition, wondering whether it would constrain his ability to put his external and domestic peacemaking plans in place.

"The more partners he swallows, the greater the danger they will end up swallowing him," Nahum Barnea, a political columnist for the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote this week.

But Barak reportedly believes that by bringing opposition parties inside his government, mostly on his terms, he will both neutralize them and create a consensus for difficult decisions.

Political analysts predict that Sharon will be appointed finance minister and that David Levy, who was foreign minister under Netanyahu, will be foreign minister again.

In Barak's Labor Party, there is much grumbling about that scenario.

Labor will be sidelined, and the new government will not represent enough of a break with the past, they say, if two former ministers of Netanyahu hold important positions.

Shas is upset, too, by Barak's decision to give the Interior Ministry to Sharansky.

Israel Radio reported that Shas leaders were going to break off their negotiations with the prime minister-elect and said the leaders were turning to Aryeh Deri, their former leader, for counsel.

Deri, who was convicted of corruption in the spring, had stepped down as leader so that he would not hobble Shas' chances of joining the government.